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More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

C >> Charles Darwin >> More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I




The Entada is a beast. (48/5. The large seeds of Entada scandens are
occasionally floated across the Atlantic and cast on the shores of
Europe.); I have never differed from you about the growth of a plant in a
new island being a FAR harder trial than transportal, though certainly that
seems hard enough. Indeed I suspect I go even further than you in this
respect; but it is too long a story.

Thank you for the Aristolochia and Viscum cases: what species were they?
I ask, because oddly these two very genera I have seen advanced as
instances (I forget at present by whom, but by good men) in which the
agency of insects was absolutely necessary for impregnation. In our
British dioecious Viscum I suppose it must be necessary. Was there
anything to show that the stigma was ready for pollen in these two cases?
for it seems that there are many cases in which pollen is shed long before
the stigma is ready. As in our Viscum, insects carry, sufficiently
regularly for impregnation, pollen from flower to flower, I should think
that there must be occasional crosses even in an hermaphrodite Viscum. I
have never heard of bees and butterflies, only moths, producing fertile
eggs without copulation.

With respect to the Ray Society, I profited so enormously by its publishing
my Cirrepedia, that I cannot quite agree with you on confining it to
translations; I know not how else I could possibly have published.

I have just sent in my name for 20 pounds to the Linnaean Society, but I
must confess I have done it with heavy groans, whereas I daresay you gave
your 20 pounds like a light-hearted gentleman...

P.S. Wollaston speaks strongly about the intermediate grade between two
varieties in insects and mollusca being often rarer than the two varieties
themselves. This is obviously very important for me, and not easy to
explain. I believe I have had cases from you. But, if you believe in
this, I wish you would give me a sentence to quote from you on this head.
There must, I think, be a good deal of truth in it; otherwise there could
hardly be nearly distinct varieties under any species, for we should have
instead a blending series, as in brambles and willows.


LETTER 49. TO J.D. HOOKER.
July 13th, 1856.

What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful,
blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! With respect to
crossing, from one sentence in your letter I think you misunderstand me. I
am very far from believing in hybrids: only in crossing of the same
species or of close varieties. These two or three last days I have been
observing wheat, and have convinced myself that L. Deslongchamps is in
error about impregnation taking place in closed flowers; i.e., of course, I
can judge only from external appearances. By the way, R. Brown once told
me that the use of the brush on stigma of grasses was unknown. Do you know
its use?...

You say most truly about multiple creations and my notions. If any one
case could be proved, I should be smashed; but as I am writing my book, I
try to take as much pains as possible to give the strongest cases opposed
to me, and often such conjectures as occur to me. I have been working your
books as the richest (and vilest) mine against me; and what hard work I
have had to get up your New Zealand Flora! As I have to quote you so
often, I should like to refer to Muller's case of the Australian Alps.
Where is it published? Is it a book? A correct reference would be enough
for me, though it is wrong even to quote without looking oneself. I should
like to see very much Forbes's sheets, which you refer to; but I must
confess (I hardly know why) I have got rather to mistrust poor dear Forbes.

There is wonderful ill logic in his famous and admirable memoir on
distribution, as it appears to me, now that I have got it up so as to give
the heads in a page. Depend on it, my saying is a true one--viz. that a
compiler is a great man, and an original man a commonplace man. Any fool
can generalise and speculate; but oh, my heavens, to get up at second hand
a New Zealand Flora, that is work...

And now I am going to beg almost as great a favour as a man can beg of
another: and I ask some five or six weeks before I want the favour done,
that it may appear less horrid. It is to read, but well copied out, my
pages (about forty!!) on Alpine floras and faunas, Arctic and Antarctic
floras and faunas, and the supposed cold mundane period. It would be
really an enormous advantage to me, as I am sure otherwise to make
botanical blunders. I would specify the few points on which I most want
your advice. But it is quite likely that you may object on the ground that
you might be publishing before me (I hope to publish in a year at
furthest), so that it would hamper and bother you; and secondly you may
object to the loss of time, for I daresay it would take an hour and a half
to read. It certainly would be of immense advantage to me; but of course
you must not think of doing it if it would interfere with your own work.

I do not consider this request in futuro as breaking my promise to give no
more trouble for some time.

From Lyell's letters, he is coming round at a railway pace on the
mutability of species, and authorises me to put some sentences on this head
in my preface.

I shall meet Lyell on Wednesday at Lord Stanhope's, and will ask him to
forward my letter to you; though, as my arguments have not struck him, they
cannot have force, and my head must be crotchety on the subject; but the
crotchets keep firmly there. I have given your opinion on continuous land,
I see, too strongly.


LETTER 50. TO S.P. WOODWARD.
Down, July 18th [1856].

Very many thanks for your kindness in writing to me at such length, and I
am glad to say for your sake that I do not see that I shall have to beg any
further favours. What a range and what a variability in the Cyrena!
(50/1. A genus of Lamellibranchs ranging from the Lias to the present
day.) Your list of the ranges of the land and fresh-water shells certainly
is most striking and curious, and especially as the antiquity of four of
them is so clearly shown.

I have got Harvey's seaside book, and liked it; I was not particularly
struck with it, but I will re-read the first and last chapters.

I am growing as bad as the worst about species, and hardly have a vestige
of belief in the permanence of species left in me; and this confession will
make you think very lightly of me, but I cannot help it. Such has become
my honest conviction, though the difficulties and arguments against such
heresy are certainly most weighty.


LETTER 51. TO C. LYELL.
November 10th [1856].

I know you like all cases of negative geological evidence being upset. I
fancied that I was a most unwilling believer in negative evidence; but yet
such negative evidence did seem to me so strong that in my "Fossil
Lepadidae" I have stated, giving reasons, that I did not believe there
could have existed any sessile cirripedes during the Secondary ages. Now,
the other day Bosquet of Maestricht sends me a perfect drawing of a perfect
Chthamalus (a recent genus) from the Chalk! (51/1. Chthamalus, a genus of
Cirripedia. ("A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia," by Charles Darwin,
page 447. London, 1854.) A fossil species of this genus of Upper
Cretaceous age was named by Bosquet Chthamalus Darwini. See "Origin,"
Edition VI., page 284; also Zittel, "Traite de Paleontologie," Traduit par
Dr. C. Barrois, Volume II., page 540, figure 748. Paris, 1887.) Indeed,
it is stretching a point to make it specifically distinct from our living
British species. It is a genus not hitherto found in any Tertiary bed.


LETTER 52. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, July 9th, 1857.

I am extremely much obliged to you for having so fully entered on my point.
I knew I was on unsafe ground, but it proves far unsafer than I had
thought. I had thought that Brulle (52/1. This no doubt refers to A.
Brulle's paper in the "Comptes rendus" 1844, of which a translation is
given in the "Annals and Mag. of Natural History," 1844, page 484. In
speaking of the development of the Articulata, the author says "that the
appendages are manifested at an earlier period of the existence of an
Articulate animal the more complex its degree of organisation, and vice
versa that they make their appearance the later, the fewer the number of
transformations which it has to undergo.") had a wider basis for his
generalisation, for I made the extract several years ago, and I presume (I
state it as some excuse for myself) that I doubted it, for, differently
from my general habit, I have not extracted his grounds. It was meeting
with Barneoud's paper which made me think there might be truth in the
doctrine. (52/2. Apparently Barneoud "On the Organogeny of Irregular
Corollas," from the "Comptes rendus," 1847, as given in "Annals and Mag. of
Natural History," 1847, page 440. The paper chiefly deals with the fact
that in their earliest condition irregular flowers are regular. The view
attributed to Barneoud does not seem so definitely given in this paper as
in a previous one ("Ann. Sc. Nat." Bot., Tom. VI., page 268.) Your
instance of heart and brain of fish seems to me very good. It was a very
stupid blunder on my part not thinking of the posterior part of the time of
development. I shall, of course, not allude to this subject, which I
rather grieve about, as I wished it to be true; but, alas! a scientific man
ought to have no wishes, no affections--a mere heart of stone.

There is only one point in your letter which at present I cannot quite
follow you in: supposing that Barneoud's (I do not say Brulle's) remarks
were true and universal--i.e., that the petals which have to undergo the
greatest amount of development and modification begin to change the soonest
from the simple and common embryonic form of the petal--if this were a true
law, then I cannot but think that it would throw light on Milne Edwards'
proposition that the wider apart the classes of animals are, the sooner do
they diverge from the common embryonic plan--which common embryonic [plan]
may be compared with the similar petals in the early bud, the several
petals in one flower being compared to the distinct but similar embryos of
the different classes. I much wish that you would so far keep this in
mind, that whenever we meet I might hear how far you differ or concur in
this. I have always looked at Barneoud's and Brulle's proposition as only
in some degree analogous.

P.S. I see in my abstract of Milne Edwards' paper, he speaks of "the most
perfect and important organs" as being first developed, and I should have
thought that this was usually synonymous with the most developed or
modified.


LETTER 53. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(53/1. The following letter is chiefly of interest as showing the amount
and kind of work required for Darwin's conclusions on "large genera
varying," which occupy no more than two or three pages in the "Origin"
(Edition I., page 55). Some correspondence on the subject is given in the
"Life and Letters," II., pages 102-5.)

Down, August 22nd [1857].

Your handwriting always rejoices the cockles of my heart; though you have
no reason to be "overwhelmed with shame," as I did not expect to hear.

I write now chiefly to know whether you can tell me how to write to Hermann
Schlagenheit (is this spelt right?) (53/2. Schlagintweit.), for I believe
he is returned to England, and he has poultry skins for me from W. Elliot
of Madras.

I am very glad to hear that you have been tabulating some Floras about
varieties. Will you just tell me roughly the result? Do you not find it
takes much time? I am employing a laboriously careful schoolmaster, who
does the tabulating and dividing into two great cohorts, more carefully
than I can. This being so, I should be very glad some time to have Koch,
Webb's Canaries, and Ledebour, and Grisebach, but I do not know even where
Rumelia is. I shall work the British flora with three separate Floras; and
I intend dividing the varieties into two classes, as Asa Gray and Henslow
give the materials, and, further, A. Gray and H.C. Watson have marked for
me the forms, which they consider real species, but yet are very close to
others; and it will be curious to compare results. If it will all hold
good it is very important for me; for it explains, as I think, all
classification, i.e. the quasi-branching and sub-branching of forms, as if
from one root, big genera increasing and splitting up, etc., as you will
perceive. But then comes in, also, what I call a principle of divergence,
which I think I can explain, but which is too long, and perhaps you would
not care to hear. As you have been on this subject, you might like to hear
what very little is complete (for my schoolmaster has had three weeks'
holidays)--only three cases as yet, I see.

BABINGTON--British Flora.

593 species in genera of 5 and 593 (odd chance equal) in
upwards have in a thousand genera of 3 and downwards have
species presenting vars. in a thousand presenting vars.
134/1000.* 37/1000.

(*53/3. This sentence may be interpreted as follows: The number of
species which present varieties are 134 per thousand in genera of 5 species
and upwards. The result is obtained from tabulation of 593 species.)

HOOKER--New Zealand.

Genera with 4 species and With 3 species and downwards
upwards, 150/1000. 114/1000.

GODRON--Central France.

With 5 species and upwards With 3 species and downwards
160/1000. 105/1000.

I do not enter into details on omitting introduced plants and very varying
genera, as Rubus, Salix, Rosa, etc., which would make the result more in
favour.

I enjoyed seeing Henslow extremely, though I was a good way from well at
the time. Farewell, my dear Hooker: do not forget your visit here some
time.


LETTER 54. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, November 14th [1857].

On Tuesday I will send off from London, whither I go on that day,
Ledebour's three remaining volumes, Grisebach and Cybele, i.e., all that I
have, and most truly am I obliged to you for them. I find the rule, as
yet, of the species varying most in the large genera universal, except in
Miquel's very brief and therefore imperfect list of the Holland flora,
which makes me very anxious to tabulate a fuller flora of Holland. I shall
remain in London till Friday morning, and if quite convenient to send me
two volumes of D.C. Prodromus, I could take them home and tabulate them. I
should think a volume with a large best known natural family, and a volume
with several small broken families would be best, always supposing that the
varieties are conspicuously marked in both. Have you the volume published
by Lowe on Madeira? If so and if any varieties are marked I should much
like to see it, to see if I can make out anything about habitats of vars.
in so small an area--a point on which I have become very curious. I fear
there is no chance of your possessing Forbes and Hancock "British Shells,"
a grand work, which I much wish to tabulate.

Very many thanks for seed of Adlumia cirrhosa, which I will carefully
observe. My notice in the G. Ch. on Kidney Beans (54.1 "On the Agency of
Bees in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Flowers" ("Gardeners'
Chronicle," 1857, page 725).) has brought me a curious letter from an
intelligent gardener, with a most remarkable lot of beans, crossed in a
marvellous manner IN THE FIRST GENERATION, like the peas sent to you by
Berkeley and like those experimentalised on by Gartner and by Wiegmann. It
is a very odd case; I shall sow these seeds and see what comes up. How
very odd that pollen of one form should affect the outer coats and size of
the bean produced by pure species!...


LETTER 55. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down [1857?].

You know how I work subjects: namely, if I stumble on any general remark,
and if I find it confirmed in any other very distinct class, then I try to
find out whether it is true,--if it has any bearing on my work. The
following, perhaps, may be important to me. Dr. Wight remarks that
Cucurbitaceae (55/1. Wight, "Remarks on the Fruit of the Natural Order
Cucurbitaceae" ("Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." VIII., page 261). R. Wight, F.R.S.
(1796-1872) was Superintendent of the Madras Botanic Garden.) is a very
isolated family, and has very diverging affinities. I find, strongly put
and illustrated, the very same remark in the genera of hymenoptera. Now,
it is not to me at first apparent why a very distinct and isolated group
should be apt to have more divergent affinities than a less isolated group.
I am aware that most genera have more affinities than in two ways, which
latter, perhaps, is the commonest case. I see how infinitely vague all
this is; but I should very much like to know what you and Mr. Bentham (if
he will read this), who have attended so much to the principles of
classification, think of this. Perhaps the best way would be to think of
half a dozen most isolated groups of plants, and then consider whether the
affinities point in an unusual number of directions. Very likely you may
think the whole question too vague to be worth consideration.


LETTER 56. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, April 8th [1857].

I now want to ask your opinion, and for facts on a point; and as I shall
often want to do this during the next year or two, so let me say, once for
all, that you must not take trouble out of mere good nature (of which
towards me you have a most abundant stock), but you must consider, in
regard to the trouble any question may take, whether you think it worth
while--as all loss of time so far lessens your original work--to give me
facts to be quoted on your authority in my work. Do not think I shall be
disappointed if you cannot spare time; for already I have profited
enormously from your judgment and knowledge. I earnestly beg you to act as
I suggest, and not take trouble solely out of good-nature.

My point is as follows: Harvey gives the case of Fucus varying remarkably,
and yet in same way under most different conditions. D. Don makes same
remark in regard to Juncus bufonius in England and India. Polygala
vulgaris has white, red, and blue flowers in Faroe, England, and I think
Herbert says in Zante. Now such cases seem to me very striking, as showing
how little relation some variations have to climatal conditions.

Do you think there are many such cases? Does Oxalis corniculata present
exactly the same varieties under very different climates?

How is it with any other British plants in New Zealand, or at the foot of
the Himalaya? Will you think over this and let me hear the result?

One other question: do you remember whether the introduced Sonchus in New
Zealand was less, equally, or more common than the aboriginal stock of the
same species, where both occurred together? I forget whether there is any
other case parallel with this curious one of the Sonchus...

I have been making good, though slow, progress with my book, for facts have
been falling nicely into groups, enlightening each other.


LETTER 57. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Moor Park, Farnham, Surrey [1857?].

Your letter has been forwarded to me here, where I am profiting by a few
weeks' rest and hydropathy. Your letter has interested and amused me much.
I am extremely glad you have taken up the Aphis (57/1. Professor Huxley's
paper on the organic reproduction of Aphis is in the "Trans. Linn. Soc."
XXII. (1858), page 193. Prof. Owen had treated the subject in his
introductory Hunterian lecture "On Parthenogenesis" (1849). His theory
cannot be fully given here. Briefly, he holds that parthenogenesis is due
to the inheritance of a "remnant of spermatic virtue": when the "spermatic
force" or "virtue" is exhausted fresh impregnation occurs. Huxley severely
criticises both Owen's facts and his theory.) question, but, for Heaven's
sake, do not come the mild Hindoo (whatever he may be) to Owen; your father
confessor trembles for you. I fancy Owen thinks much of this doctrine of
his; I never from the first believed it, and I cannot but think that the
same power is concerned in producing aphides without fertilisation, and
producing, for instance, nails on the amputated stump of a man's fingers,
or the new tail of a lizard. By the way, I saw somewhere during the last
week or so a statement of a man rearing from the same set of eggs winged
and wingless aphides, which seemed new to me. Does not some Yankee say
that the American viviparous aphides are winged? I am particularly glad
that you are ruminating on the act of fertilisation: it has long seemed to
me the most wonderful and curious of physiological problems. I have often
and often speculated for amusement on the subject, but quite fruitlessly.
Do you not think that the conjugation of the Diatomaceae will ultimately
throw light on the subject? But the other day I came to the conclusion
that some day we shall have cases of young being produced from spermatozoa
or pollen without an ovule. Approaching the subject from the side which
attracts me most, viz., inheritance, I have lately been inclined to
speculate, very crudely and indistinctly, that propagation by true
fertilisation will turn out to be a sort of mixture, and not true fusion,
of two distinct individuals, or rather of innumerable individuals, as each
parent has its parents and ancestors. I can understand on no other view
the way in which crossed forms go back to so large an extent to ancestral
forms. But all this, of course, is infinitely crude. I hope to be in
London in the course of this month, and there are two or three points
which, for my own sake, I want to discuss briefly with you.


LETTER 58. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, September 26th [1857].

Thanks for your very pleasant note. It amuses me to see what a bug-bear I
have made myself to you; when having written some very pungent and good
sentence it must be very disagreeable to have my face rise up like an ugly
ghost. (58/1. This probably refers to Darwin's wish to moderate a certain
pugnacity in Huxley.) I have always suspected Agassiz of superficiality
and wretched reasoning powers; but I think such men do immense good in
their way. See how he stirred up all Europe about glaciers. By the way,
Lyell has been at the glaciers, or rather their effects, and seems to have
done good work in testing and judging what others have done...

In regard to classification and all the endless disputes about the "Natural
System," which no two authors define in the same way, I believe it ought,
in accordance to my heterodox notions, to be simply genealogical. But as
we have no written pedigrees you will, perhaps, say this will not help
much; but I think it ultimately will, whenever heterodoxy becomes
orthodoxy, for it will clear away an immense amount of rubbish about the
value of characters, and will make the difference between analogy and
homology clear. The time will come, I believe, though I shall not live to
see it, when we shall have very fairly true genealogical trees of each
great kingdom of Nature.


LETTER 59. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, December 16th [1857].

In my opinion your Catalogue (59/1. It appears from a letter to Sir J.D.
Hooker (December 25th, 1857) that the reference is to the proofs of
Huxley's "Explanatory Preface to the Catalogue of the Palaeontological
Collection in the Museum of Practical Geology," by T.H. Huxley and R.
Etheridge, 1865. Mr. Huxley appends a note at page xlix: "It should be
noted that these pages were written before the appearance of Mr. Darwin's
book on 'The Origin of Species'--a work which has effected a revolution in
biological speculation.") is simply the very best resume, by far, on the
whole science of Natural History, which I have ever seen. I really have no
criticisms: I agree with every word. Your metaphors and explanations
strike me as admirable. In many parts it is curious how what you have
written agrees with what I have been writing, only with the melancholy
difference for me that you put everything in twice as striking a manner as
I do. I append, more for the sake of showing that I have attended to the
whole than for any other object, a few most trivial criticisms.

I was amused to meet with some of the arguments, which you advanced in talk
with me, on classification; and it pleases me, [that] my long proses were
so far not thrown away, as they led you to bring out here some good
sentences. But on classification (59/2. This probably refers to Mr.
Huxley's discussion on "Natural Classification," a subject hardly
susceptible of fruitful treatment except from an evolutionary standpoint.)
I am not quite sure that I yet wholly go with you, though I agree with
every word you have here said. The whole, I repeat, in my opinion is
admirable and excellent.


LETTER 60. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, February 28th [1858].

Hearty thanks for De Candolle received. I have put the big genera in hand.
Also many thanks for your valuable remarks on the affinities of the species
in great genera, which will be of much use to me in my chapter on
classification. Your opinion is what I had expected from what little I
knew, but I much wanted it confirmed, and many of your remarks were more or
less new to me and all of value.

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